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How Diet Obsessed Are You?

If you are anything like me, very. I have a diet secret so I’ve written a book on weight loss because books on weight loss sell. I guess there are more people obsessed with diets than we think. I’ve written the shortest diet book in history: it starts on page 1 and ends on page 1. It contains 2 sentences and 20 words. I figured the skinnier the book, the better it will play on your subconscious. I am about to unleash a secret that I suspect diet gurus had known all along…will you buy it? But first, some thoughts on thinness.

Celebrities have often shared their weight loss secrets of hardcore training and rabbit food (the honest ones) and the liars have chalked up slenderness to either good genes or breastfeeding after enormous weight gain due to pregnancy. After Victoria Beckham had her last child, Harper, she claimed to have eaten five handfuls of food a day to shed her baby weight. I’ve tried it and gained three pounds. My excuse? Um, I have very large hands? Or did I mention that my handfuls did not contain edamame and nuts but my favorite foods like, handful of pizza, handful of chocolate, handful of ice cream (which was a messy handful) and piled way too high?

When I was in college I went with a friend to see the Estee Lauder model Paulina Porizkova at Filenes department store in Boston. I think she wrote a book on beauty and was signing autographs. Actually, I forget why she was there, but it was a good guess. When my friend was next in line she grilled Paulina on how she stayed slim. Here is how it went:

Friend: Paulina, How do you stay so thin?

Paulina: You’re thin too!

Friend: Not as thin as YOU Paulina!

Paulina: Do you have a boyfriend?

Friend: Yes…

Paulina looks slyly to her left, slyly to her right, partially cups hand over mouth, calls friend closer and in a pssst type of manner says: Lots and lots of sex!

Sex burns 4 calories per minute. You do the math. This is a subjective diet. Aren’t they all. This depends on how often and how long your sexual trysts last. Nobody tallied up how many calories you burn when you have sex with yourself. Nobody cares.

Grief is another way to lose weight. I’ve been grieving the loss of a pet cat. 7 pounds had dissolved inside my grief. Grieving to lose weight is not fun. Nothing we do to lose weight is fun. The only fun part about losing weight is when the weight is finally lost we can wear our hot jeans again. I am very close to wearing my hot jeans again. But now I am starting to get over the loss of the cat. Uh oh.

What do I want to accomplish with weight loss? Actually, I don’t want to lose much weight that can be measured on a scale. I want to get back to the weight that I was before I had gained it, which wasn’t much less than I am now, but does include tightening of the flesh and, once achieved, will render meaning out of the “hot” in hot jeans. I am not trying to achieve “The Gap.”

“The Gap” is another story. The Gap is something I found on my teenage son’s Facebook page under “Likes.” When he was a kid we used to dress him in Kids Gap clothing, but since we moved from New York City (where you could have found a Gap on every street corner, I don’t know if they are still around because I haven’t searched and they are not here in Switzerland) I thought perhaps he was being nostalgic. That he was pining for The Gap. I said to myself, “Aw, he is being nostalgic, pining for The Gap.” But when I clicked on “The Gap” I found it was a page celebrating the space between a skinny girl’s thighs with sexy bikini-rich photo after photo of girls with said gaps. Which technically is “A” gap, not “The” gap. I could never look like that. I suspect nobody could. I believe “The Gap” is something one is born with, like being born in the shape of an apple or a pear. I hate to see myself as a piece of fruit, but this is not a subject for this entry. Maybe a future one. I’ve seen photos of very skinny celebs in bikinis and many of them do not have “The Gap.” Anorexics have gaps. But we don’t want to go there.

One time I had dropped weight very quickly. This was 15 years ago when I moved to Switzerland from my beloved, energy-packed city of New York. I guess that was how I dealt with the anxiety over living in a too quiet town in a too quiet foreign country without command of the German language, without friends and family, but with a toddler and with a husband who constantly travelled for business.

I ate sparsely to control the things that I could not control (in case you’d forgotten, see above.) My diet consisted of: 1 nonfat chocolate yoghurt for breakfast, a scoop of tuna on lettuce for lunch, a handful of potato chips in the afternoon (my hands must have been smaller back then) and steamed veggies for dinner. Don’t try this diet at home. You might want to try this at a restaurant though, if you are too lazy to prepare or cook steamed vegetables. Or, if you are too weak to get off the couch. At any rate, this diet is not a good diet for your health. I got over it fast.

Back to my current diet and the book I wrote. I’ve decided to let you in on my secret for free! Yes, free. You don’t have to buy my book for an astronomical price off Amazon. The reason is because there is no book, but, you’ve read this entry all the way to the end and so I applaud you!

Here it is sans book. My diet secret, are you ready? Get a pen. Or your iPhone. Here it is:

Cut calories by cutting the portion size of whatever it is you love to eat. Exercise every now and then.